BONIFACE KEMPE AND ILDEPHONSE HESKETH, PRIESTS

 

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BONIFACE KEMPE AND ILDEPHONSE HESKETH, PRIESTS

In 1643, the parliament made and published several rigorous acts and ordinances against delinquents, as they called them, and papists: by which all, whether catholics or others, that had already or should hereafter assist the king against the parliament, were to have their whole estate seized and sequestered into the hands of committees, named to that purpose; and all catholics, as such, without any other offence, were to forfeit two thirds of their whole estates, real and personal, unless they would take an oath, by which they abjured the pope, transubstantiation, purgatory, worship of the host, &c. With what rigour these acts were put into execution, we shall see hereafter.

1644. This year the civil wars continuing, two priests of the venerable order of St Benedict lost their lives by the savage cruelty of the parliament soldiers, of whom thus writes Father B. W. in his manuscript: Father Boniface Kempe, alias Kipton, professed at Mountserrat, in Spain, with Father Ildephonse Hesketh, in the civil wars in 1644, were taken by parliament soldiers, and driven on foot before them in the heat of summer; by which cruel and outrageous usage they were so heated and spent, that they either forthwith or soon after died."

This same year also, as Mr Austin writes (under the name of William Birchley) in his christian Moderator, Mr Price, a catholic gentleman, was murdered at Lincoln, in hatred of his religion. The story he relates thus; "I remember an officer of my acquaintance, under the earl of Manchester, told me, that at their taking of Lincoln from the cavaliers, in the year 1644, he was an eye-witness of this tragedy. The next day after the town was taken, some of our (the parliament) common soldiers, in cold blood, meeting with Mr Price of Washingley in Huntingdonshire, a papist, asked him, Art thou Price the papist? - I am, said he, Price the Roman catholic: whereupon one of them immediately shot him dead.

Likewise two reverend priests were executed this year at Tyburn for their character, viz. Mr John Duckett, of the secular clergy, and Father Ralph Corby of the Society of Jesus.

Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 2 

⬅️ The Holy Martyrs of England and Wales

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that we who know how courageously your holy martyrs

 confessed the faith, may experience their goodness as they intercede for us with you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.